“Nature is beautiful because it looks like Art, and Art can only be called beautiful if we are conscious of it as Art while yet it looks like Nature.” Immanuel Kant, In THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT (1790). He establishes the a priori principles underlying the faculty of judgment while exploring our inner thinking faculties. The first part of the book deals with the subject of our aesthetic sensibility; “we respond to certain natural phenomena as beautiful, when we recognize in nature a harmonious order that satisfies the mind’s own need for order.” The second half of the critique concentrates on the apparent teleology in nature’s design of organisms. Kant argues that our minds are inclined to see purpose and order in nature and this is the main principle underlying all of our judgments. Although this might imply a supersensible Designer, Kant insists that we cannot prove a supernatural dimension or the existence of God.
Proving or disproving God, is too gigantic of a mission for the limited mind of humans, as yet. And one can only feel him like Rumi says in between two silences. Irrespective of the debate about who created it, there’s no doubting the fact that the only source of beauty lies in nature and that is the perpetual source of inspiration for anyone in search of it. Look for it in the mountains, flowers, birds, or inside your heart and you will find it.
